That smoking is bad for you and can do serious damage to your health is something most people are aware of. However, a new study shows one can put their body on the line with as few as two cigarettes per day. Now, scientists issue a warning that everyone should read and pass on.

Smoking has been around for a long time. Many things have changed in the last few decades; for example, you can’t smoke in restaurants, or not even in outdoor seating areas, most of the time. But still, a lot of people choose to smoke, or in many cases can’t stop, even though they might want to.

The health risks of smoking are widely recognized by authorities and experts. Per the Cleveland Clinic, smoking can affect “everything from the appearance of your skin and nails to how your tissues, organs and even your DNA work.”

It further reads that “the effects of smoking on your body start the moment you light up a cigarette,” as “thousands of chemicals released from burning tobacco start their damaging journey before you’ve even taken a puff.”

Smoking increases the risk for many health conditions such as cancer, lung disease, heart and vascular disease, diabetes, and miscarriage. Secondhand smoke also risks damaging you..

While full-time smoking is very bad for you, even though you, let’s say, would only smoke two cigarettes a day, it turns out to be very bad. Per ABC, scientists have now issued a new major warning about the dangers of smoking to only a few.

Scientists issue serious warning about smoking ‘only’ two cigarettes per day

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University examined the smoking habits of more than 300,000 adults over the course of 20 years. The study found that even smoking two cigarettes a day gave a person a 60 percent higher risk of death from any cause, compared to those who never smoked.

The study was published in PLOS Medicine on November 18, and further found that those who smoked had a 50 percent higher risk for heart disease.

Dr. Jennifer Miao is a cardiologist at Yale University and an ABC News Medical Unit fellow, and said: “Tobacco use is a very well-established risk factor for heart disease.” Dr Jennifer Miao, cardiologist at Yale University and a part of the ABC News Medical Unit, said. “It really damages the blood vessel lining and it accelerates the development of plaques and coronary artery disease.”

At the same time, those who stop smoking more or less straight away reduce the risk of health issues.

“It’s important that people know that when they stop smoking, their risk goes down immediately and significantly,” Dr. Erfan Tasdighi, an internal medicine physician at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and a co-author on the study, told ABC.

“Important to quit smoking early on”

“It’s important to quit smoking early on, and no amount of smoking is without risk and health consequences,” he added, saying that just smoking a little still can be very bad.

“We actually have the evidence … to say that even less than one cigarette a day can increase different multiple cardiovascular outcomes, and it’s not something that’s clinically insignificant. It’s very, very important for us as clinicians to acknowledge that it’s a lot easier said than done.”

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